The city of Dnipro is to build an industrial park, Innovation Forpost, on 61.4 ha with UAH 2.7 billion in investment, the Dnipro Development Agency has said.
“All procedures for Innovation Forpost industrial park blueprints were completed in July 2018. A total of UAH 2.7 billion in investment will be raised for the industrial park within five years, 9.93% of this amount is planned to be taken from the city’s budget, 9.45% from the state, the rest of the financing are funds of investors and the management company,” Director of the Dnipro Development Agency Volodymyr Panchenko told Interfax-Ukraine.
According to Deputy Mayor of Dnipro Jaanika Merilo, Innovation Forpost will be located 4 km from the city center on an area formerly owned by Interpipe’s plant. The park will house offices and R&D centers, an exhibition complex with an innovative science museum, a HypeUA testing site, business incubators, training campuses, residential blocks with a kindergarten, a hotel and green areas.
Panchenko adds that the development of transport and engineering networks will begin in October 2018. Construction is scheduled to start in the spring of 2019, and the first facilities of the park will be put into operation by the end of the year.
“The first facilities of the industrial park will be the front office of the industrial park, the Industrial EXPO exhibition center, offices and the prototyping center as part of the business incubator, urban amenities,” Panchenko said.
According to him, the agency is preparing separate investment projects and investors are being selected under each of them.
“We already have requests for four project sites in the production area, companies come from the innovation sphere. For example, today one company plans to produce commodities by printing products on 3D printers. There are also investors interested in building an expo center on 12,000 square meters. A trade and service area is an attracting project too,” he said.
The Innovation Forpost project envisages the construction of new buildings (production and office buildings, maintenance complexes) and the reconstruction of existing ones. For example, the foundry is planned to be transformed into exhibition art space.
According to agency, the park will create 5,000 jobs.
“For us, this site is one of ten that we plan to launch in Dnipro. Investors have Ukrainian and foreign roots. It is wrong to think that they do not want to invest, it’s just necessary to create favorable conditions,” Panchenko said.
According to him, not only budget funds and private investment but also grants can be used to finance a project. In particular, the Dnipro Development Agency this year has won two European grants worth UAH 22 million.
The inconsistency of Ukraine’s biosecurity measures with those of the importing countries hinders exports of fruits and berries from Ukraine, the Ukrsadprom association has stated.
According to a press release of the association, today, unlike the main exporting countries, Ukraine demonstrates sharp fluctuations in the volume of exports and instability of supplies.
“For comparison, in recent years exports of fruits and berries from Poland exceed $1 billion, while for Ukraine this volume reaches $150-200 million, so Ukraine exports six times less fruit and berry products than its European neighbor,” the report says.
The association is convinced that the coordination of mutual recognition of biosecurity measures will allow establishing trade, ensuring the social and economic development of Ukraine, stimulating the development of the horticulture and berry-growing sector in Ukraine and help attract investments in long-term agricultural and infrastructure projects.
To solve the problem of biosecurity measures inconsistency, Ukrsadprom appealed to First Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Economic Development and Trade Stepan Kubiv with the request to instruct his ministry, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the State Service of Ukraine for Food Safety and Consumers’ Rights Protection to coordinate the mutual recognition of biosecurity measures with the potential importing countries for exports of fruits, berries, as wells as planting stock.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has lent a $20 million loan to Zerno-Agrotrade LLC and Tsukoragroprom LLC, owned by the Astarta agro-industrial holding, for replenishment of their working capital.
“Astarta will introduce advanced IT solutions necessary for precise farming that it develops in Ukraine. These modern agricultural technologies will allow boosting the yield of agricultural crops and reducing the use of mineral fertilizers by 15%,” EBRD Senior Adviser for External Relations Anton Usov wrote on Facebook.
In the next three years, Astarta also plans to increase the area of land on which it will use the technology of precision farming.
“In the context of this project, Astarta will also offer a high-quality integrated training program for graduates of schools and students of universities who want to work in the agricultural sector of Ukraine,” Usov noted.
Astarta is a vertically integrated agro-industrial holding operating in Poltava, Vinnytsia, Khmelnytsky, Ternopil, Zhytomyr, Chernihiv, Cherkasy, and Kharkiv regions. It consists of eight sugar refineries, agricultural enterprises with a land bank of about 250,000 hectares, a soybean processing facility, dairy farms and a complex that produce energy from agricultural residues.
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PJSC Odesa Cable Works Odesakabel has launched a new production facility for the production of modern LAN cables, the company’s press service said.
“One of the latest investments was the acquisition of modern equipment for the production of LAN cables from the world’s leading brands: NIEHOFF (Germany) and SETIC (France),” the company emphasized.
The new LAN cables production complex was launched on August 21, 2018.
The plant emphasizes that the commissioning of the complex will allow the enterprise to increase output by 70%, or 5,000 km of cable per month, while quality will meet the highest international standards.
Odesakabel is the largest cable factory in Ukraine. It produces optical fiber cables, LAN cables, radio frequency cables, telecoms cables, power cables, wires and cords.
